<p>I know this is a dumb question to ask. I have been using the Princeton Review book to practice, and I do better on the real SAT than the Princeton Review practice tests. I'm taking the SAT again, and I'm now using the Blue Book. I find that the practice tests in the blue book are harder than those in the Princeton Review book. Do the tests in the blue book really mirror the actual SAT? Are they made up by the ETS?</p>
<p>The Blue Book is probably the closest you’ll get to the real thing. It contains previously administered SAT exams.</p>
<p>Yah the blue book is like the real SAT, the PR book is not.</p>
<p>That’s not to say other books (Kaplan, Princeton, whatever) aren’t useful though. If you just want to drill questions, use those ones, but when you want to sit down and take a whole test, the blue book is the way to go (unless you’ve run out of those; if that’s the case, my personal experience has shown that Princeton mirrors the blue book more closely than Kaplan does, but both are probably fine).</p>
<p>In my opinion, Kaplan is way too easy and using it and giving yourself a sense of overconfidence is setting yourself up for failure. On that, I consistently scored over 2360 and was bewildered by my “success”. Princeton Review (for SAT) and Sparknotes (for SAT II) tend to be somewhat harder than the real things. My PR test results were somewhat lower (like 2200s), and I was very -___-.</p>
<p>I have had no experience with the Blue Book, but since it is legit CollegeBoard, its the best simulation you can get. However, I personally think that using PR would be a better choice, as you would be setting a higher bar for yourself and would be pleasantly surprised by your somewhat to significantly better-than-practiced/expected score on the real thing (as long as you don’t be lazy and convince yourself that your 1500 will blossom into a 2300 or something). Also, I think PR was cheaper for me too.</p>